Educate Together : An introduction to Innovation & Interactivity

Teachers at Educate Together Bray teamed up with Make Create Innovate to develop a 4 week workshop series for students introducing them to interactive design using Makey Makey.

The students responded to the project brief by creating involved many imaginative, well-designed prototypes for making learning interactive. Prototypes included an interactive poster of affirmative statements, a musical staircase, a maths activity incorporating responsive pressure plates and more.

Teachers participated in each workshop in a hands-on way, supporting the students to realize the objectives of each session and learning about the process from the inside out. These teachers then facilitated the same workshop for other students on a different day, essentially applying the new knowledge and skills gained. This was an important part of the process in terms of making the learning process sustainable through a team-teaching, live ‘train the trainer’ approach. The objective was for the teachers to develop a skill set that would enable them to get the best use out of their investment in technology and build towards projects, live events or interactive artworks that may or may not be co-facilitated with STEAM educational organisations like Make Create Innovate. As part of that process, Make Create Innovate created a teaching resource to support future projects of this kind within the school

Overall, feedback from the experience was very positive and we look forward to future opportunities to work with schools on developing STEAM-based learning. experiences.

“I enjoyed learning something new; in particular circuitry, using Makey Makeys for first time and soldering. I felt observing how Kate and Siobhán facilitate was beneficial to my own teaching practice. I enjoyed using technology in a hands-on creative way with relatively inexpensive materials. I felt challenged to understand the workshop content enough to be able to adequately teach it the following day to our new group.“